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Samsung Odyssey 3D G9
Gaming Gear

Samsung Odyssey 3D G9 gaming monitor review: Premium 4K gaming in 2D and glasses-free 3D

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3D video is often touted as “the new thing,” but in fact, it has been around for many decades. Those of us old enough might remember those cardboard glasses at the theater with red and blue filters and the cheesy B-movies that went with them. After a long hiatus from the cinema, DLP projectors made it possible for shutter glasses to grace IMAX theaters today.

3D in consumer displays has followed a similar path, but the one constant has been those glasses. Though they take different forms, they all involve what is essentially a pair of goggles sitting on your head while you watch. Many would say this is why the format has never really caught on.

Glasses-free 3D is not new, but I haven’t seen any of the best gaming monitors in the genre until recently, when Samsung offered a test drive of its Odyssey 3D G9. It utilizes real-time eye tracking along with some slick software to create a 3D experience from dedicated content and conversion of 2D material as well. It’s also a premium gaming monitor featuring a 27-inch IPS panel, 4K resolution, 165 Hz refresh rate, Adaptive-Sync, HDR10, and a wide gamut color. Let’s take a look.


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Samsung Odyssey 3D G9 Specs

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Panel Type / Backlight

IPS / W-LED, edge array

Screen Size / Aspect Ratio

27 inches / 16:9

Max Resolution and Refresh Rate

3840×2160 @ 165 Hz

Row 3 – Cell 0

FreeSync and G-Sync Compatible

Row 4 – Cell 0

3D compatible w/conversion

Native Color Depth and Gamut

10-bit / DCI-P3

Response Time (GTG)

1ms

Brightness (mfr)

350 nits

Contrast (mfr)

1,000:1

Speakers

2x 5w

Video Inputs

1x DisplayPort 1.4

Row 11 – Cell 0

2x HDMI 2.1

Audio

3.5mm headphone output

USB 3.1

1x up, 1x down

Power Consumption

34.8w, brightness @ 200 nits

Panel Dimensions

WxHxD w/base

24.2 x 16.4-21.1 x 8 inches

(615 x 417-536 x 203mm)

Panel Thickness

1.8 inches (46mm)

Bezel Width

Top/Bottom: 0.7 inch (18mm)

Row 18 – Cell 0

Sides: 0.3 inch (8mm)

Weight

16.5 pounds (7.5kg)

Warranty

3 years

Today’s best Samsung 27″ Odyssey 3D G90XF 165Hz Gaming Monitor deals

The 3D G9 is first and foremost, a premium gaming monitor. Without its 3D technology, it still competes with the best 4K gaming monitors currently available, featuring 165 Hz, Adaptive-Sync, and a precise overdrive that delivers smooth motion resolution and quick responses. Accurate out-of-box color, wide gamut coverage, and high brightness ensure an excellent image that will satisfy gamers from casual to hardcore.

The 3D part adds a significant price premium. The 3D G9 currently retails for $1,800. And since you can find other gaming monitors with similar performance for less money, you have to know going in that you’re paying extra for that glasses-free 3D experience.

I first encountered this tech during my review of Acer’s SpatialLabs portable monitor about two years ago. Samsung uses the same technique of sensors that track the user’s eye and head movements to maintain a stereo image as you change your viewpoint. To this, the 3D G9 adds spatial audio that moves with the image, creating the illusion of surround sound. Not only does the 3D G9 play 3D-enabled games, but its companion app, Reality Hub, can convert 2D videos on the fly into 3D content.

When you’re not marveling at the 3D image or playing games, the 3D G9 is an extremely capable all-around display with wide gamut color that covers just under 90% of DCI-P3. Accuracy is spot-on without calibration, so you don’t need to do much to set it up. There’s plenty of brightness available for both SDR and HDR content, with 482 and 510 nits peak, respectively. A field dimming feature triples the contrast for both formats, up to around 2,600:1.

What do you need to make this magic happen? The hardware requirements for an optimal 3D experience are an Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 1700X processor and a GeForce RTX 3080 or RTX 4080. You’ll also need 32GB of DDR5-5600 RAM. If you have an AMD GPU, only side-by-side 3D formats are supported. You can do this over DisplayPort or HDMI, and you’ll need a USB connection to enable the sensor package.

If you have the budget and the will, the 3D G9 delivers a unique experience that you can’t get anywhere else, at least until I review the Acer SpatialLabs View 27, which will be very soon.

Assembly and Accessories

The 3D G9 comes in a slim box with its contents protected by crumbly foam. It resembles any other Odyssey monitor, wrapped in a plain brown box. Only the “3D” in the model name hints at what’s inside. The panel snaps onto a substantial stand with a wide upright and solid metal base. A small external power supply with right-angle plugs is included, along with HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB cables.

Product 360

Image 1 of 5

(Image credit: Samsung)(Image credit: Samsung)(Image credit: Samsung)(Image credit: Samsung)(Image credit: Samsung)

The 3D G9 doesn’t look vastly different from other Samsung monitors, or other monitors for that matter. It integrates its cutting-edge technology neatly with a slightly wider-than-normal top bezel and a small bulge at the bottom. These parts house the eye and head tracking sensors, which maintain the 3D effect. It’s important to note that this only works for a single user sitting directly in front of the monitor. If you are more than 25 degrees off-center, the image won’t look right. Also, since you’re seeing two phased images per frame, each one is 1920×1080 pixels at 60 Hz.

The screen is covered in a very shiny front layer, which is optically sharp but picks up every stray reflection. You’ll want to be thoughtful when placing the 3D G9 by avoiding windows and overhead light sources. It’s best used in dim or indirect light. Across the bottom of the panel is a bright LED band that can display one of 48 colors, or a series of moving effects, or sync with what’s happening on screen.

The tracking sensors are cleverly hidden in the bezel and are barely visible. This element means you’ll be hard-pressed to tell the 3D G9 from a regular monitor. You can just see them in the third photo above.

From the sides and back, all you see is silver plastic and smooth surfaces with no visible texture or style lines. The back has a single vent across the top and a small logo offset to the left. The stand is unique in my experience with a wide upright featuring a small cable management hole. It includes full ergonomics with 3/15 degrees tilt and 4.7 inches of height plus a 90-degree portrait mode. There is no swivel adjustment. Movements are firm, almost too firm, but keep the 3D G9 in place without wobbling.

Input face rearwards and include two HDMI 2.1, one DisplayPort 1.4, and USB 3.1, one upstream and two down. You’ll need the former for 3D operation. There is no headphone jack, but the internal speakers produce clean sound with decent volume from their five-watt op-amps. Also on the input panel is the OSD joystick, which controls all monitor functions.

OSD Features

The 3D G9’s OSD resembles that of any Samsung gaming monitor, featuring a dashboard-style interface that displays status information at the top and a menu tree. There are five sub-menus with everything needed for calibration, gaming aids, and 3D operation.

Image 1 of 5

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The Game menu has all video processing options and the sole 3D control, which is an input selector. You can bind either HDMI or DisplayPort to the 3D function with equal capability. There is no advantage to one over the other. 3D doesn’t work with Adaptive-Sync or HDR and tops out at FHD 60 Hz. The only gaming aid is a selection of aiming points. The Edge Lighting feature is here as well with 48 colors, six effects, and a sync option.

In the Picture menu, you’ll find 10 picture modes. Eco is the default and unlike most monitors, it does not limit brightness. And it’s blessed with perfect color, no calibration needed. You can tweak it if you want with fixed color temps, gamma presets and single-point white balance sliders. A gamut selector toggles between Native (full gamut) and Auto which switches between sRGB for SDR and P3 for HDR. Also here is local dimming, which is a bit misleading. The 3D G9 only employs field dimming to increase contrast but it’s available for SDR and HDR and gets you up to around 2,600:1. For HDR, you can turn on dynamic tone mapping which improves the look of HDR10’s static metadata.

The 3D G9 included Picture-in-Picture (PIP) to display two video sources simultaneously. The window can be sized and moved, you can play sound from either input, or change the aspect ratio.

Samsung Odyssey 3D G9 Calibration Settings

Calibrating the 3D G9 is unnecessary in its default Eco mode. If you want auto color gamut switching, change that option to Auto from Native, which shows the full gamut all the time, around 90% coverage of DCI-P3. If you do want to tweak, reduce gamma and green by one click each for a tiny drop in error values, but you won’t see a significant visual difference to the image. Those settings are below. The dimming can be used in SDR and HDR modes and works well when set on High to stretch contrast to 2,600:1. Though it’s called local dimming, it is in fact a field dimming feature.

For HDR content, you can adjust any image parameter, but that too is unnecessary. I recommend engaging the dynamic tone mapping, Active versus the default Static setting. My SDR settings are shown below.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Picture Mode

Eco

Brightness 200 nits

20

Brightness 120 nits

11

Brightness 100 nits

9

Brightness 80 nits

7

Brightness 50 nits

5 (min. 22 nits)

Contrast

50

Gamma

-1

Color Temp User

Red 0, Green -1, Blue 0

Gaming and Hands-on

Diving first into the 3D G9’s 3D operation, I downloaded and installed the Reality Hub app. You’ll need to specify which input, HDMI or DisplayPort, is used for 3D, and make a USB connection to get it working. Reality Hub is the central point for all 3D content and video conversion. You can register games and use it to apply AI processing to 2D video that’s playing full screen.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

In practice, the 3D effect is extremely deep. The third axis is as realistic as I’ve ever seen from any 3D display. There’s no sacrifice to going glasses-free. In fact, I found it deeper than what I’ve seen using DLP Link with a projector. Gaming is something that should be savored. You won’t want to play fast-paced shooters because they go by too quickly to enjoy the scenery. That’s just as well because the resolution is halved to FHD, and the refresh rate maxes at 60 Hz. But as I explored a virtual world, I took my time to enjoy the effect. The 3D G9’s eye tracking is precise and responds instantly to changes in viewpoint. I could move my eyes and head, and the 3D effect never wavered. I could only compare it to the Acer SpatialLabs 3D portable monitor I reviewed two years ago, and Samsung’s version is definitely superior.

Of the 3D G9’s tricks, my favorite is the video conversion. Once you’ve installed Reality Hub, it’s always running in the system tray and when you play a full screen video, a pop-up asks if you’d like to convert it to 3D. Answering yes makes the screen shift for a few seconds while the AI does its thing and then you’re presented with perfect 3D video. There’s no visible crosstalk and the effect stays solid if you move your head up to 25 degrees off-center. You also need to stay within 22-37 inches (55-95cm) for optimal viewing.

I played content from YouTube as well as Netflix, Discovery+ and Disney+. 3D doesn’t work with HDR, but all the SDR streams I played were rendered perfectly. The effect is almost mesmerizing and definitely addictive. Watching 3D without glasses removes the gimmick vibe it always had for me. If you’re a fan of desktop TV watching and you want 3D, the 3D G9 will be your jam.

For regular games like Doom Eternal, I enjoyed the 3D G9’s bright and colorful HDR rendering. Though it doesn’t have the contrast of a Mini LED or OLED screen, it does have higher peaks than most edge-lit monitors. Color and tone mapping were spot-on as well.

Gaming response is on par with the best 4K LCD panels I’ve reviewed. Input lag is low enough that I couldn’t perceive it, and motion processing is super smooth. You won’t get 4K frame rates much higher than the 3D G9’s 165fps unless you play on a 240 Hz OLED.

For everyday use, the 3D G9 excels with a sharply detailed image. 4K at 27 inches means the highest pixel density short of an 8K screen at 163ppi. It was perfect for Photoshop, Word and Excel, which all benefit from high resolution. The screen’s front layer was a little challenging to place being so shiny, but optically, it was a cut above the norm.

Takeaway: The 3D G9 is an extremely competent 4K gaming monitor with quick response and a colorful, sharp and bright image. It’s expensive, but you’re getting glasses-free 3D, which is superbly done and will upconvert any full-screen 2D video. The effect is incredibly lifelike and deep, and unlike anything else you’ve seen before. It’s a huge leap over the Acer SpatialLabs 3D portable I saw two years ago. If 3D is the future, the 3D G9 is ahead of its time.

MORE: Best Gaming Monitors

MORE: How We Test PC Monitors

MORE: How to Buy a PC Monitor



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The Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan is pictured in a pink living space.
Product Reviews

Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan review: prompt particle detection and satisfying airflow helped me overlook the disappointing lack of smart features

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Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan: two-minute review

The Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan is a tower fan and air purifier combo that helps you beat the heat while improving the quality of the surrounding air.

Available in the US, UK, and Australia, you can find the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan with a list price of $429.99 / £449.99 / AU$799 at Dyson or third-party retailers. As I write this, there are discounts available at Dyson US and Amazon UK, reducing the price to $299.99 / £349.99, so it’s worth checking if there are savings to be made before you buy.

With its bladeless loop amplifier, glossy plastic, and metallic finishes, the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan has the modern, clean aesthetic we’ve come to expect from the brand. Generally, it’s available in a white and nickel colorway, but there’s a bonus option of black and nickel over in the US.


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(Image credit: Future)

Unlike most of the best fans and best air purifiers, the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan lacks onboard controls and app compatibility, and can only be controlled with the included remote control. While this in itself isn’t an issue, as the remote works well and has a magnetic, curved design that makes it easy to store on the top of the loop amplifier, it does mean that you’d be a bit scuppered if you happened to lose the remote. Not to mention that, at this price point, it’s verging on stingy that Dyson hasn’t given the TP10 the app compatibility that’s included with their more expensive products.

  • Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan (White) at Newegg for $429.99

In terms of the fan performance, I got the results I expected when testing the TP10 Purifying Fan; namely that it produced a smooth and cooling flow of air, the strength of which was particularly impressive when running at top speed, as I could still feel the cooling effects 14ft / 4.3m away.

As the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan’s sensors can only detect particulate matter and not VOCs (volatile organic compounds), it won’t automatically react to all airborne nasties, but it’s still capable of filtering them thanks to the HEPA H13 and activated carbon filter. The LCD screen displays the real-time levels of PM2.5 and PM10 in micrograms per cubic meter, with color coding making it clear how this translates to air quality, ranging from good to very poor. There’s also a 24-hour graph, which offers a basic indication of the changes in air quality over time.

(Image credit: Future)

I was happy with the speedy detection and prompt air clearing I recorded during my time testing the TP10 Purifying Fan, with it detecting and clearing contamination from dry shampoo within a minute of me spraying it, and automatically upping its power when my two fluffy cats paid a visit. It didn’t make a noticeable impact on food odors or the dry shampoo fragrance, however.

The noise levels were also commendable, with the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan giving whisper-quiet readings as low as 26dB and 33dB in auto mode and on fan speed one, and the highest reading on fan speed ten being just 52dB, which is equivalent to light traffic.

Despite my frustrations around the lack of app support, I’d still recommend the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan, thanks to the overall good performance from both elements. If you’ve not got your heart set on a Dyson, or don’t want to have a tower fan running in the colder months, I recommend teaming up the Blueair Blue Pure 411i Max with the Shark TurboBlade. Both performed well in our testing, and thanks to regular deals, the two together often work out cheaper than the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 alone.

Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan review: price & availability

  • List price: $429.99 / £449.99 / AU$799
  • Available now in the US, UK, and Australia

Available from Dyson and other retailers, the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 purifying fan has a list price of $429.99 / £449.99 / AU$799. It’s available in white and silver, with an additional option of black and nickel for shoppers in the US. It’s worth keeping a lookout for potential savings, as at the time of writing, there’s a generous $130 saving on the white model at Dyson US, bringing the cost down to $299.99. Meanwhile, in the UK, there’s a 22% discount in effect, lowering the price to £349.99.

According to Dyson, the 360 Combi Glass HEPA + Carbon air purifier filter used in the TP10 could last around 12 months of 12-hour use. Replacement filters have a list price of $79.99 / £75 / AU$99, so it’s worth considering whether you’re happy to commit to paying this out on a fairly regular basis before making a purchase.

I initially considered the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan a little overpriced, largely due to the lack of app support for the cost, but the TP10 won me over with its strong airflow, prompt particulate detection, and quick reaction times. Could you get a separate tower fan and air purifier that would do the job just as well for less money? Probably, but if you’re a Dyson fan who wants a Dyson fan, plus an air purifier, I’d recommend this combo.

Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan review: specs

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Type

Purifying tower fan

Fan speeds

10

Oscillation

45, 90, 180, 350 degrees

Timer

Yes

CADR (Clean air delivery rate)

Requested

Filter

HEPA H13 and activated carbon

Particle sizes detected

PM2.5, PM10

Dimensions

8.7 x 8.7 x 41.3 inches / 22 x 22 x 105cm

Weight

10.4 lb / 4.7kg

Control

Onboard power button and remote control

Timer

Only in sleep mode

Additional modes

Sleep mode

Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan review: design and features

  • Offers real-time, color-coded PM2.5 and PM10 readings
  • No smart features or app compatibility
  • HEPA H13 filters are easy to access and replace

Featuring the classic Dyson aesthetic with its bladeless fan and smooth curves, this is a purifying fan I didn’t mind having out on display. That being said, I did find the glossy white plastic was a bit of a dust and lint magnet. The metallic nickel-color plastic was too, but it was barely noticeable compared to the white.

A useful combo for the summer months, the Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 consists of a bladeless tower fan that sits on a purifying unit. This purifying unit houses a HEPA H13 filter, with H13 being considered to be within the highest tier of HEPA air filtration, and is understood to capture 99.95% of particles as small as 0.2 microns. The filter comes in two halves, with one half clipping into the front of the purifying unit, the other at the back. Both halves are easy to get to thanks to the push-down catches on either side of the unit.

(Image credit: Future)

There are ten fan speeds to cycle through, as well as an auto mode, which uses the sensors on the TP10 Purifying Fan to detect and react to the presence of particulate matter with a diameter of up to ten micrometers. It can’t detect VOCs (volatile organic compounds), which can be emitted by paint and cleaning chemicals, among other sources, but the carbon element of the 360 Combi Glass HEPA and Carbon air purifier filter means it’s still capable of clearing them from the air.

One thing that frustrates me with some Dyson devices is the lack of smart features and app compatibility. Considering this functionality is available with the more expensive Dyson products, and far cheaper brands offer remote control and air quality data via their apps, it seems a little unfair for Dyson to hold this feature back unless customers are willing to pay an even higher premium.

Aside from the power button, there’s a distinct lack of onboard controls on the TP10. This isn’t an outright issue, as I’d have used the included remote control nine times out of ten anyway, but with no app compatibility, it does mean I’d find myself in a bit of a pickle if I managed to lose the remote. As with all of the Dyson remotes I’ve used, the one for the TP10 is curved and magnetized, meaning it can be kept on the top of the fan.

(Image credit: Future)

The round LCD screen on the front of the TP10 is bright and large enough to read easily. It was easy to cycle through the multiple different displays using the information button on the remote control. The information I was most interested in was the particle readings, and I was happy to find there were dedicated screens showing the ambient levels of both PM2.5 and PM10. Both readings are independently communicated in numerals and color rating, making them simple to understand. The TP10 has been programmed to classify readings below 35 micrograms per cubic meter as good air quality, with higher readings colored either yellow for fair air quality, orange for poor, or red for very poor.

While the lack of a companion app means it’s not possible to view historical data, or real-time data when away from home, there’s a 24-hour graph on one of the display screens, so I could at least see if there’d been any spikes in contamination throughout the day – though that was as detailed as it got. It’s worth noting that the continuous monitoring needed to support this function isn’t enabled by default, but it’s a simple case of holding the auto button on the remote for five seconds to enable it.

  • Design score: 3.5 out of 5

Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan review: performance

  • Returned air quality to an acceptable level within a minute of air contamination
  • Didn’t reduce or eliminate odors from cooking or fragrances
  • Quickly reacted to the presence of cat fluff and dander

All of the fan functions performed as expected during my time testing the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan. It was good to have a wide range of oscillation options, with four choices from 45 to 350 degrees, and I appreciated that, unlike the Dyson Cool CF1 desk fan, the TP10 remembered the last oscillation setting I’d used, so I didn’t have to cycle through the options each time. I find it curious that the timer on the TP10 Purifying Fan is only available in sleep mode, which dims the display, so I had to use the remote to wake the display if I wanted to view the current air quality reading whenever I used the timer.

The airflow felt smooth, but seemed to fluctuate a little at times. In terms of fan strength, I found I could feel a noticeable, cool breeze around 4ft / 1.2m away from the TP10 Purifying Fan on setting one, 7ft / 2m on setting five, and 14ft / 4.3m on speed 10, which is admirable considering it doesn’t run very loud.

(Image credit: Future)

To test the PM2.5 detection while the fan was on auto mode, I sprayed some dry shampoo around two feet away from the front of the TP10. The sensors picked up the presence of the dry shampoo particles in about 16 seconds, and I saw the levels of PM2.5 per cubic meter rapidly climbing on the LDC screen.

It was interesting to see a numerical representation of the speed at which the Dyson TP10 cleared the air, as not all air purifiers offer this level of data. In this case, the contamination dropped from 89 micrograms per cubic meter to 35 micrograms per cubic meter, which was back within the green range, within a minute of me spraying the dry shampoo. While it made quick work of clearing the particulates in the air, it didn’t have any effect on the odor from the dry shampoo or from the food smells from the minestrone soup I had on my lunch break.

It’s very easy to tell whether the larger-particle sensors on an air purifier are doing their job once I get my two very fluffy cats involved in the testing process, after evicting them from my living room for the initial stages of my testing, so that I can set a baseline. It was clear the particle sensors on the TP10 were sensitive to pet-related particles like fur and dander after both kitties came to investigate, as both the PM2.5 and PM10 readings rose by around eight micrograms, and the fan speed increased slightly to compensate. It stayed at roughly this level, with the occasional ramp-up in speed, for the entire time they were in the room. Once they’d wandered off, it took less than ten minutes for the purifier to bring the reading back down to its usual level.

(Image credit: Future)

The Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan operated really quietly, considering its size, with a lower than whisper-quiet reading of just 26dB when idling on auto mode, rising to 33dB on fan speed one, 38dB on speed 5, and just 52dB on speed ten, which is comparable to light traffic or background music. This is particularly positive when compared to the readings I got from the Molekule Air Pro, which gave an output of 38dB at the lowest fan speed, 51dB on speed three, and a pretty shouty 78dB at speed six, though admittedly the TP10 doesn’t have any where near as many bells and whistles.

As an added testament to the quiet functioning of the TP10 Purifying Fan, my very timid female cat spooks at most things, but was comfortable enough to touch her nose on the display even when the purifier was ramping up in response to her presence. It’s also worth mentioning that it was quiet enough to fall asleep next to, and I could happily watch TV with the TP10 running at level five fan speed nearby.

The quick detection, reaction, and purifying times meant I was pleased with the performance of the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan overall, though I didn’t find it made the air feel quite as fresh as the GoveeLife Smart Air Purifier Lite.

  • Performance score: 4.5 out of 5

Should I buy the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan?

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Section

Notes

Score

Value for money

The TP10’s premium design, pleasant cooling, and powerful purifying performance mean you won’t be disappointed, but you could save money by ditching Dyson and combining a well-performing fan and purifier instead.

4/5

Design & Features

The smooth curves, bladeless design, and nice material finish make the TP10 an attractive purifying solution. It detects and communicates the ambient levels of particulate matter before they’re captured by the HEPA H13 filter. It’s just a shame there’s no smart features.

3.5/5

Performance

I appreciated the satisfyingly strong airflow and prompt purifying performance, with the TP10’s sensors making quick work of detecting and removing particles from the air. Its quiet operation meant it wasn’t disruptive, so much so that it didn’t phase my flighty feline.

4.5/5

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan review: Also consider

Swipe to scroll horizontallyHeader Cell – Column 0

Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10

Blueair Blue Pure 411i Max / Blue Max 3250i

Shark TurboBlade

Type

Purifying tower fan

Air purifier

Multi-directional tower fan

Price

$429.99 / £449.99 / AU$799

$169.99 / £169

$299.99 / £249.99

Fan speeds

10

3

10

Additional modes

Auto, sleep mode

Auto, night mode

Natural Breeze, Sleep Mode, BreezeBoost

Oscillation

Up to 350 degrees

N/A

Up to 180 degrees

Filter

HEPA H13 and activated carbon

HEPASilent and activated carbon

N/A

App support

No

Yes

No

Dimensions

8.7 x 8.7 x 41.3 inches / 220 x 220 x 1,050mm

18.9 x 10.6 x 10.6″ / 481 x 269 x 269 mm

11.8 x 31.6 x 44.8″ / 300 x 800 x 1,120mm (max)

Weight

10.4 lb / 4.7kg

7.5 lbs / 3.4 kg

15lb / 8.8kg

How I tested the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan

  • I used the TP10 purifying fan in the office and at home
  • I observed its detection and purification skills
  • I evaluated the strength of the airflow and the sound levels

I used the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan in our photo studio, my home office, and my bedroom for one week. I evaluated how easy it was to operate, along with the build quality and aesthetics, and explored the available functions and features.

I tested the strength of the airflow by determining at what distance I could still feel a cooling breeze. I also observed the TP10 Purifying Fan’s detection and purification skills, both passively and during standardized testing.

I used a decibel meter app on my iPhone to record the noise levels, taking readings from around 2ft / 600mm away, ensuring the fan wasn’t blowing directly into the microphone.

I checked the timer worked as expected, and tested out the sleep mode to see whether the TP10 Purifying Fan was quiet enough for me to be able to sleep well with it running overnight.

Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1 TP10 Purifying Fan: Price Comparison



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Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 Review: A solid 2-in-1, though not without compromise
Product Reviews

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch review: purple imperfect

by admin



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We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Two-minute review

I have been begging Apple to release a purple MacBook for a few years now and have been repeatedly disappointed year after year, so when I found out that the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch was going to sport a pastel purple colorway, it really was Microsoft’s game to lose here.

And while it doesn’t quite come close enough to dethroning the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch, performance-wise, it’s a very solid everyday laptop that looks undeniably superior to Apple’s rather boring MacBook Air design over the past couple of years.

The Surface Laptop 13-inch starts at $899.99 / £1,099 / AU$1,699 on Microsoft’s website, which is roughly the same price as the MacBook Air 13-inch (which starts at $999 / £999 / AU$1,699), but its performance, at times, is substantially slower than Apple’s best laptop, making it an iffy value proposition for those who could go either way as far as operating systems go.


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Had the Surface Laptop 13-inch shipped with an Intel Lunar Lake chip rather than the underpowered Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core SoC, this would be an entirely different review, as I’d be giving this laptop six-out-of-five stars, because in just about every other way than its performance and minor compatibility issues, this is the best ultrabook I’ve ever put my hands on.

Aesthetically, it’s an upgrade over its larger Surface Laptop 7 sibling that launched last year, with a tighter form factor that is exceptionally lightweight and sleek. It’s 3:2 display offers plenty of real estate for a laptop this small, and its keyboard and trackpad are a dream to type on.

Best of all, it comes in purple (technically ‘Violet’), though you will pay slightly more for this color option than the base platinum colorway as it is only available on the higher capacity configuration.

Meanwhile, the ARM-based Snapdragon X Plus is an incredibly efficient chip, getting just over 17 hours of battery life on a single charge in my testing, which easily translates into two full workdays or more without recharging, outlasting even the latest MacBook Air 13-inch models.

If all you’re looking for is a gorgeous-looking laptop that is great for everyday computing tasks, school work, and general productivity—while liberating you from having to keep a constant eye out for power outlets to recharge day after day—then the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch is one of the best Windows laptops you can buy. It just isn’t the knockout blow against the MacBook Air that Windows fans might be hoping for.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Price & availability

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

  • How much does it cost? Starts at $899.99 / £1,039 / AU$1,699
  • When is it available? It’s available now
  • Where can you get it? You can buy it in the US, UK, and Australia

The Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch is available now, starting at $899.99 / £899 / AU$1,699 directly from Microsoft or at retail partners. It comes in slightly cheaper than the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 in the US and UK, (starting at $1,099.99 and £1,039, respectively). In Australia, however, the larger Surface Laptop 7 13.8-inch starts out cheaper at AU$1,597 (and it comes with more powerful hardware to boot).

The Surface Laptop 7 13.8-inch also features a more powerful Qualcomm chip, a sharper screen, and better port support (though no Violet colorway, you’ll have to settle for the equally gorgeous Sapphire option).

Similarly, the Surface Laptop 13-inch is also slightly cheaper than the MacBook Air 13-inch with M4 in the US (starting at $999), while being slightly more expensive in the UK (the base MacBook Air 13-inch start at £999), while there is no difference in starting price between the two in Australia.

Compare this, however, with a similar memory-and-storage-specced Dell 14 Plus, starting at $799.99 / £999 / AU$1,298, but which comes with more powerful x86 processors from AMD and Intel, meaning that you get better performance without any compatibility worries that comes with ARM-based chips.

Granted, none of these competing laptops look anywhere near as good as the Surface Laptop 13-inch, but if your main interest is performance, there are cheaper options that will get you what you want.

All that said, however, this is the best-looking laptop you’re going to find at this price, in my opinion, and yes, that includes the entire MacBook lineup. If you want to look good at a cafe while reading emails, or streaming Netflix in an airport lounge while waiting for a flight, this laptop will turn heads (at least in Violet) without totally breaking the bank.

The only real knock I can point to is that the long-term value of the Surface Laptop 13-inch is lower than a MacBook Air 13-inch with M4. The latter is much more performant and it will stay ‘current’ for a few years longer than the Surface Laptop 13-inch, in all likelihood.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Specs

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

  • Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core SoC
  • 16GB LPDDR5x
  • The display could be better

There isn’t a whole lot of variation in terms of spec configurations for the Surface Laptop 13-inch, with the biggest difference being some extra storage and two additional colorway options.

Swipe to scroll horizontallyMicrosoft Surface Laptop 13-inch Base Specs

Price:

$899.99 at Microsoft.com | £899 at Microsoft.com| AU$1,699 at Microsoft.com

Colorways:

Platinum

CPU:

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core

GPU:

Qualcomm Adreno X1-45

Memory:

16GB LPDDR5X-4300

Storage:

256GB SSD

Screen:

13-inch, 3:2, 1920x1280p 60Hz, 400-nit, Touch PixelSense

Ports:

2 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 w/ DP and Power Delivery, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1 x combo jack

Battery (WHr):

50WHr

Wireless:

WiFi 7, BT 5.4

Camera:

1080p

Weight:

2.7 lbs (1.22 kg)

Dimensions:

11.25 x 8.43 x 0.61 ins | (285.65 x 214.14 x 15.6mm)

For $100 / £100 / AU$200 more, you can upgrade the storage on the Surface Laptop 13-inch to 512GB and get additional Violet and Ocean colorway options, but otherwise the more expensive configuration (which I tested out for this review) is identical to the base configuration.

Swipe to scroll horizontallyMicrosoft Surface Laptop 13-inch Max Specs

Price:

$999.99 at Microsoft.com | £999 at Microsoft.com| AU$1,899 at Microsoft.com

Colorways:

Platinum, Violet, Ocean

CPU:

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core

GPU:

Qualcomm Adreno X1-45

Memory:

16GB LPDDR5X-4300

Storage:

512GB SSD

Screen:

13-inch, 3:2, 1920x1280p 60Hz, 400-nit, Touch PixelSense display

Ports:

2 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 w/ DP and Power Delivery, 1 x USB Type-A 3.1, 1 x 3.5mm combo jack

Battery (WHr):

50WHr

Wireless:

WiFi 7, BT 5.4

Camera:

1080p

Weight:

2.7 lbs (1.22 kg)

Dimensions:

11.25 x 8.43 x 0.61 ins | (285.65 x 214.14 x 15.6mm)

There’s no option to upgrade the memory or storage on any of these models beyond the configuration options at the time of purchase, which does make the longevity of the Surface Laptop 13-inch’s specs more limited than laptops like the Dell 14 Plus, where you can at least upgrade the storage if you’d like.

And while the specs on the MacBook Air 13-inch with M4 might not be upgradable either, they are simply better overall for a relatively small increase in price, meaning the long-term value of the MacBook Air 13-inch (M4) is superior overall.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Design

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

  • Beautiful color options and fantastic aesthetics
  • Light and portable
  • Display resolution is only 1280p with no HDR

The design of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch is simply stunning. There’s no other way to describe it. Starting with the exterior aesthetics, the Surface Laptop 13-inch is as close to a MacBook Air for Windows as you’re going to find on the market, and in my opinion, it’s even better looking thanks to the additional Violet and Ocean colorways alongside the default Platinum look of the base model. You pay extra for the splash of color, but it’s a worthwhile investment. The machined aluminum finish of the laptop chassis, along with the pastel-ish hue of the chassis and the darker, more matte color of the keycaps and trackpad.

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

The display on the Surface Laptop 13-inch is a step down from the larger 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 from 2024, which had a maximum resolution of 2,304×1,536p (a PPI of 201, compared to the 1,920×1,280p Surface Laptop 13-inch’s 178 PPI) and 120Hz refresh compared to just 60Hz for the Surface Laptop 13-inch.

It also has a lower contrast ratio of 1,000:1 compared to the larger version’s 1,400:1. The Surface Laptop 7’s display is also made of Corning Gorilla Glass 5. In contrast, the Surface Laptop 13-inch’s display is only “Strengthened glass” according to Microsoft’s official spec sheet for the Surface Laptop lineup.

The display does max out at 400-nits, though, which is nice and bright enough for most people and situations, but you might struggle to see the screen properly if you’re using the laptop outside on a bright sunny day.

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

I found that carrying the Surface Laptop 13-inch around was very easy, as it fit in pretty much any bag and was thin and compact enough that I was able to use it sitting in an airplane seat during my 15-hour flight to Computex 2025 last month with almost no issue.

Speaking of using the laptop, the key switches are quiet and have good travel and responsiveness, and everything is well-spaced, so you don’t feel cramped despite the laptop’s smaller size. The trackpad is likewise responsive and smooth, making navigation and clicking around the desktop a breeze.

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

One thing that’s not that great is the port selection, which is limited to two USB-C Gen 3.2 ports, a USB-A Gen 3.1 port, and a 3.5mm jack for a headset. It’d have been nice to get some USB4 ports in there like you get with the larger Surface Laptop 7 models, but both USB-C ports do support power delivery and DP 1.4 output (though if you’re trying to connect to more than one monitor, you need one port per monitor, rather than being able to daisy-chain them to just a single port).

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

The webcam, meanwhile, is a 1080p Surface Studio Camera that is crisp enough, but unlike the larger Surface Laptop models from last year, it does not support Windows Hello authentication, and it doesn’t have a physical privacy shutter, which in 2025 should be pretty much mandatory, so along with the port and display downgrades, I’ve got to ding what is otherwise a nearly perfect design.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Performance

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

  • A performance downgrade from last year’s Surface Laptop
  • Some compatibility issues with ARM architecture still linger
  • Gaming is functionally a no-go

What holds the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch from really being the fierce MacBook Air competitor that many of us hoped it would be is the 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus SoC.

When I reviewed the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 last year, I was genuinely impressed by the performance of the Snapdragon X Elite chip, despite the compatibility challenges that Windows-on-Arm is still working through. That was a much more powerful chip, though, and even the 10-core Snapdragon X Plus SoC offers noticeably better performance than what the Surface Laptop 13-inch is packing.

The 8-core chip isn’t awful, to be clear. It’s perfectly good for general computing tasks like streaming, school work, and office productivity, and it’s probably one of the best student laptops out there for those who want a little bit of style to go along with their studies.

But if you need this laptop to do anything other than writing up papers and reports, streaming movies, or using web-based cloud software, you will likely be unhappy with what you’re getting here for the price.

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

The most direct and obvious comparisons I can make with this laptop is the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch with Apple Silicon (starting with the Apple M2), the larger 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7, the recently released Dell 14 Plus, last year’s Dell XPS 13 (with both Intel and Qualcomm SoCs), and the Asus Zenbook A14 with the entry-level Snapdragon X SoC.

Only the M2 MacBook Air 13-inch and Dell 14 Plus are cheaper than the Surface Laptop 13-inch (at least at the time of review), and all of these laptops start around the same price, give or take a hundred bucks or so.

The models I’ve tested and that TechRadar has reviewed in the past vary by spec, so it’s not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison laid out in the charts above, as some of the Dell and Apple notebooks’ advantages can be easily chalked up to more expensive processors.

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

If you go with any of those systems at the same price as the Surface Laptop 13-inch I tested, the performance difference might not be nearly as dramatic on paper, and almost certainly won’t be all that noticeable.

Still, it’s pretty clear that the Surface Laptop 13-inch either lands somewhere in the middle of its competition, or comes in second or third from the bottom. Add to that some performance issues stemming from Microsoft’s Prism software layer that translates x86-architecture-designed programs, which is pretty much every Windows program, to be ARM-compatible.

Generally, this works rather well, but it does introduce system overhead that will slow things down. In short, unless you’re running a piece of rare ARM-native software, you will almost never get as good an experience with Windows software on ARM as you would with the x86 architecture powering Intel and AMD chips.

The question really comes down to whether or not the performance is good enough, and I think that for most people, it will be (unless you want to load up Steam and get into PC gaming. The best gaming laptop, this is not).

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Much like the MacBook Air 13-inch, the Surface Laptop 13-inch is more geared toward casual computing needs and productivity work, and it excels at these tasks.

So, even though the MacBook Air 13-inch with M4 gets roughly twice as many FPS as the Surface Laptop 13-inch, the MacBook Air 13-inch still struggles to maintain playable frame rates unless you seriously scale back your graphics settings.

The MacBook’s gaming advantage, then, only really looks intimidating as a percentage, but in practice, none of the laptops I tested were suitable for the task of playing, say, Cyberpunk 2077 at max settings and native resolution.

What it really boils down to, then, is whether you’re just looking for a new laptop to keep up with friends and family, maybe do some office work, or write that Sci-Fi novel at the local coffee shop that you’ve been meaning to finally get around to this year.

If those are the boxes that need ticking, any of the laptops listed above will get the job done, but none will look as good as the Violet Surface Laptop 13-inch.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch: Battery Life

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

  • How long does it last on a single charge? 17 hours and 14 minutes
  • How long to recharge from empty to full? With the included 45W charger, it takes about two and a half hours to charge to full.

One other key area where the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch shines is its stellar battery life. In my testing, it ran about 17 hours and 14 minutes on average in my battery test, thanks to the super efficient ARM architecture. This puts it in fourth place overall in my 10 laptop test group, but it does outlast all three MacBook Air 13-inch models in the group by an hour or more.

So even though it’s not officially in the battery life winner’s circle, you can’t ask for much more from a laptop this thin and light.

Should you buy the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch?

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)Swipe to scroll horizontallyMicrosoft Surface Laptop 13 Scorecard

Category

Notes

Rating

Value

While not as cheap as something like the Dell 14 Plus, it is on par or cheaper than similar offerings from Dell and Apple.

3.5 / 5

Specs

There aren’t a whole lot of configuration options, and the lack of USB4 is unfortunate.

3.5 / 5

Design

It’s simply gorgeous and a joy to type on. If it had a physical camera privacy shutter, better ports, and a better display, it’d be a 6 out of 5.

4.5 / 5

Performance

For a casual use notebook, it’s in line with similarly specced Windows laptops, but the MacBook Air 13-inch with M4 runs circles around it.

3.5 / 5

Battery Life

At just over 17 hours of battery life in my testing, this is one of the longest lasting Windows laptops around.

5 / 5

Final Score

It’s not perfect, and had Microsoft flexed some muscle to get a 10-core chip in this laptop without raising its price, it’d truly be the Windows MacBook Air we’ve been waiting for, but it’ll be more than close enough for most people and looks better than anything Apple has put out in years.

4 / 5

Buy the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

If my Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch review has you looking at other options, here are three other laptops you should consider instead…

How I tested the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch

  • I spent about a month with the device
  • I used our standard suite of benchmarking tools and performance tests
  • I used it as my primary work laptop, including taking it on an international work trip

I spent about a month with the Surface Laptop 13-inch, far longer than I usually spend with a device under review. While this was mostly due to circumstance (Computex and WWDC, in particular), this did allow me to do a much deeper dive.

In addition to my normal benchmarking process, I took extra time to retest some competing laptops we had in the office to come up with a more thorough comparison against the Surface Laptop 13-inch’s competitors.



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Norbauer Seneca review: a $3,600 luxury keyboard for the keyboard obsessed
Product Reviews

Norbauer Seneca review: a $3,600 luxury keyboard for the keyboard obsessed

by admin


Some people can tell great wine from okay wine. They go on wine tastings, take wine tours. They tend to spend more money on wine than most.

I am not one of those people. I can tell wine from vinegar if you show me the bottle. I am just a little bit obsessed with keyboards, though.

I have spent the past couple of months typing on the Seneca, a fully custom capacitive keyboard that starts at $3,600 and might be the best computer keyboard ever built. I’ve also made a bunch of other people type on it — folks whose attitude toward keyboards is a little more utilitarian. My wife uses a mechanical keyboard because I put it on her desk; if I took it away, she would go back to her $30 Logitech membrane keyboard with no complaints. I put the Seneca on her desk. She said it was fine. I took it away. She went back to her other keyboard.

The more normal you are about keyboards, the less impressive the Seneca is. I am not normal about keyboards, and the Seneca is goddamn incredible.

$3600

The Good

  • Beautiful
  • Incredible typing feel & sound
  • Classic layout
  • Just look at it

The Bad

  • No firmware remappability yet
  • Proprietary cable
  • Preposterously expensive

The Seneca is the first luxury keyboard from Norbauer & Co, a company that would like to be for keyboards what Leica is to cameras, Porsche is to cars, or Hermés is to handbags and scarves.

The thing that’s interesting about the Seneca is not that it’s expensive. It’s easy to make something expensive. It’s interesting because it’s the product of a keyboard obsessive’s decade-long quest to make the best possible keyboard, down to developing his own switches and stabilizers, at preposterous expense. It would be a fascinating story even if he’d failed.

Ryan Norbauer spent half a decade and hundreds of thousands of dollars reinventing every part of the keyboard. It worked. Photo: Taeha Kim / Norbauer & Co

You can read about Ryan Norbauer’s journey to develop the Seneca in the other article we just published. The brief version is this: the Seneca is a custom keyboard, a descendant of the aftermarket housings Norbauer used to make for Topre boards, except here it’s not just the housing that’s custom. The entire keyboard is made of parts you can’t get anywhere else, inside a metal chassis manufactured to a frankly unnecessary degree of precision, and hand-assembled in Los Angeles by a small team of mildly famous keyboard nerds.

It is staggeringly heavy, ungodly expensive, and unbelievably pleasant to type on, in a way that maybe only diehard keyboard enthusiasts will fully appreciate.

For lack of a better word, the Seneca feels permanent. It weighs nearly seven pounds and looks like smooth concrete or worn-down stone. The case is milled aluminum, with a plasma-ceramic oxidized finish that has a warm gray textured look but feels totally smooth. It’s actually hard to pick up; there’s nowhere to curl your fingers under it. It’s supposed to go on your desk and stay there.

Two of the Seneca’s color options: travertine (left) and oxide (right, without keycaps). Photo by Nathan Edwards / The Verge

The switches and stabilizers were developed by Norbauer & Co. and are exclusive to the company’s keyboards, which is just the Seneca for right now. They are the most interesting thing about the keyboard — the whole reason I wanted to test it. They’re phenomenal.

The switches are a riff on the Topre capacitive dome design (most famously found in the Happy Hacking Keyboard), but they’re smoother and less wobbly, with a deeper sound. Unlike every other Topre-style switch, they’re designed around MX-style keycaps from the start, so the housings don’t interfere with Cherry-profile keycaps. (This is a bigger deal than it may sound; it means the Seneca works with thousands of aftermarket keycap sets, instead of the bare handful that work with Topre boards).

The stabilizers, like the switches, took years to develop. They’re hideously complicated and overengineered, finicky to put together, and they’re without a doubt the best stabilizers in the world. There’s no rattle or tick in any of the stabilized keys, and although the spacebar has a deeper thunk than the rest of the keys, it’s not much louder to my ears.

The switches and stabilizers, shown here, have the same “Aerostem” design. Photo by Nathan Edwards / The Verge

The typing experience is sublime. The keys have a big tactile bump right at the top, a smooth downstroke, and a snappy upstroke. The ones on my review unit are medium weight, which are supposed to feel similar to 45g Topre; there are lighter and heavier options.

The switches are muted, not silenced; silicone rings on the slider soften the upstroke, and there’s a damper between the switch and PCB that quiets the downstroke and prevents coil crunch. (The switches are compatible with third-party silencing rings; I tried an old Silence-X ring, and it worked fine).

There are gaskets between the switches and the solid brass switchplate, and between the plate and the housing; there’s damping material everywhere. The result is a deep, muted thock, without a hint of ping.

The keyboard’s info page says, “The gentle sound of the Seneca is often likened to raindrops. It has a soft intentionally vintage-sounding thock without being obtrusively clacky.” Read that in whatever voice you’d like. For what it’s worth, Verge executive editor Jake Kastrenakes, who did not read the info page but did listen to the typing test embedded below, also said it sounded like raindrops.

Whatever you compare it to, the Seneca sounds and feels great.

The Seneca is available for preorder now, in a first edition of around 100 to 150 units, starting at $3,600.

The unit I’ve been testing is from Edition Zero — the first production run — which includes 50 that were offered in a private sale last summer to a small group of previous Norbauer clients, as well as a few more for testing, certification, and review.

The Edition Zero Senecas, including my review unit, came with closed-source firmware that doesn’t allow for hardware-based key remapping, which, for me, is the biggest omission. When Norbauer commissioned the firmware half a decade ago, he opted not to include remappability for the sake of simplicity. He deemed software remapping good enough for a keyboard with a standard layout that isn’t meant to be carried from computer to computer.

I do not share that opinion. I program the same function layer into all of my keyboards, and I’m moderately annoyed every time I reach for a shortcut on the Seneca that just isn’t there. But I have to concede that software remapping — I’ve been using Karabiner-Elements on Mac and the PowerToys Keyboard Manager on Windows — is basically tolerable in the short term. But hardware remapping is important on compact keyboards, like the one the company plans to make next. Norbauer is working with Luca Sevá, aka Cipulot — the guy for third-party electrocapacitive PCBs — on new open-source firmware that will allow for remapping. That firmware will be available on the Seneca, probably by the time the First Edition keyboards ship, but wasn’t yet available during my test period.

The cable is, of course, custom; a non-coiled version is also available. Photo by Nathan Edwards / The Verge

The Seneca uses a four-pin Lemo connector on the keyboard end, instead of USB-C. Photo by Nathan Edwards / The Verge

There are a few other quirks. The Seneca’s custom cable uses USB-C on the computer end and a Lemo connector at the near end. It looks very cool, and it keeps the aesthetic coherent, but if the Seneca is joining a rotation of other keyboards on your desk, it means you have to swap cables every time. On the one hand, if you’re buying a 7-pound, $3,600 keyboard, are you really going to move it off your desk that much? On the other, if you care enough about keyboards to buy this one, you probably do have a lot of nice keyboards you want to rotate between. (Norbauer is working on a short Lemo-to-USB-C dongle, but that also wasn’t ready during the review period.)

The Seneca has a totally flat typing angle. Most mechanical keyboards are higher in the back than the front, with a typing angle between 3 and 11 degrees. Ergonomically, flat (or even negative) is better. There’s an optional riser ($180, made in South Africa from native hardwoods) that gives it a three-degree typing angle, if you prefer. On a whim, I put it backward, giving the keyboard a negative three-degree angle, and now all my other keyboards feel weird. This might be the Seneca’s biggest impact on my life going forward.

The Seneca with its optional riser used backwards. This is what peak performance looks like. Photo by Nathan Edwards / The Verge

Over the past month or so, I’ve asked a few friends and family members to try typing on the Seneca. Most of them have desk jobs, and most use mechanical keyboards all day long, but they’re not keyboard nerds.

They have been, as a rule, moderately impressed. Everyone thinks it looks nice, and everyone likes the way it feels and sounds, but they are not blown away. It hasn’t ruined them for their Keychrons. Most of them ask where the number pad is.

On a functional level, the Seneca doesn’t do anything more than a $115 Keychron. Actually, it does less: there’s no wireless, no backlighting, no volume knob, no hotswap switches, and (for now) no firmware remapping. As a machine for typing, it’s peerless, but maybe not in a way that anyone but a keyboard obsessive is going to notice or care about. And that’s fine.

If you’re selling a keyboard for $3,600, you’ve narrowed your audience to two tiny and overlapping groups. You have to be able to convince the pickiest keyboard nerds on Earth that there’s something about your keyboard they can’t get anywhere else. And you have to convince the nouveau riche coders and status-obsessed desk jockeys that you’ve convinced the keyboard nerds and that this keyboard is worth half an entry-level Rolex.

Some small number of people who buy the Seneca will surely only do so because it’s beautiful and useful, and they can afford it. And that’s as good a reason as any. But mostly, this is a luxury keyboard for a very specific type of keyboard nerd. If your idea of nice is a preposterously heavy capacitive board, the Seneca is better than anything else you can buy or build.

You don’t have to spend $3,600 to get an amazing keyboard. Obviously. It’s very easy not to spend $3,600 on a keyboard. You can have a great time with an off-the-shelf board that costs under $100. For less than 10 percent of the Seneca’s price, you can get a barebones kit keyboard, add whatever switches and stabilizers and keycaps you want, and have way more control over the end result than you do with the Seneca. (Strong endorsement here for the Classic-TKL and the Bauer Lite). You can get a Realforce keyboard for $250 and fall in love with the Topre switches that launched Norbauer on the path to the Seneca all those years ago.

If you’re smart, you’ll stop there. Or, if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself a decade later with way more keyboards than computers, half-convinced to spend $3,600 on the nicest keyboard in the world.





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Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster
Product Reviews

Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster review: barely changed, but still amazing

by admin



Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster is a weird Nintendo Switch 2 launch title, something of a time capsule in every manner the phrase could imply. As a game, it’s stubbornly unchanged, and yet by being so familiar, it remains just as enjoyable as it was on its initial Nintendo 3DS release.

Review info

Platform reviewed: Nintendo Switch 2
Available on: Nintendo Switch 2
Release date: June 5, 2025

As the game’s producer Tomoya Asano noted ahead of this remaster’s release, Bravely Default was designed as a throwback to the classic 2D and 16-bit era of RPGs.

Its success both at home and abroad inspired the company to develop its HD-2D titles, such as Octopath Traveler and the Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. It emulates classic Final Fantasy with a grand globe-trotting adventure to save the world, wonderfully representative of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo Entertainment System eras of the storied franchise.


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One day, a great chasm suddenly opens in the earth underneath the village of Norende, with Tiz the sole survivor. The four crystals driving the natural balance of the world have been plunged into darkness. When he runs into one of the Vestals (priestesses of the crystals), Agnes Oblige, he is inspired to protect her and seek a way to reawaken them. Over time, you are joined in your travels by Edea Lee and Ringabel, and these four warriors of light set out to rejuvenate the world.

This is a turn-based RPG, enhanced by a deep job system and much more. The result evolves this basic framework into something highly engaging and, even all these years later, wholly unique. The titular Brave and Default mechanics bring a fascinating risk-reward thrill to difficult combat: you begin with 0 BP in each battle, with any action consuming one point. You can act multiple times in a single term by using Brave, consuming extra BP, but you’ll be unable to act again until you recover to at least zero.

Default is this game’s term for defending: you won’t act, but you’ll gain an extra BP and take less damage, allowing you to act twice next time without skipping a turn. By building up BP across multiple characters and tying it to special moves it allows for some intense all-out attacks if you strategize correctly.

Fairy-ly Strategic

(Image credit: Square Enix)

And strategize you must. Success against bosses hinges on correctly utilizing this system, as well as the jobs. These are the various classes you may already be familiar with, such as mages, thieves, and knights, alongside more exotic jobs like merchants.

Mastery of these classes allows you to inherit some of their abilities to other classes, essentially allowing a character to embody the best of two jobs at once. Battles require not just good strategy but knowing your limits, all while taking advantage of this job system to craft a mage with the speed of a thief, and so on.

One typical frustration when it comes to turn-based RPGs is that combat can soon feel slow or repetitive. These systems combine to avoid that. If you do feel the need to grind to increase your level, earn money, or improve a character’s class proficiency, you can assign actions for characters to take in auto-battles or change encounter rates and battle speed.

Best bit

(Image credit: Square Enix)

After first struggling to beat a boss, stepping back to adjust your jobs and equipment before tackling it with the right balance of offense and defense takes advantage of every aspect of the battle system, and makes victory feel oh-so sweet.

It’s hard to find much to complain about when it comes to Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster. It was praised in its time for being one of the best RPGs, and that remains true today. The script and characters charm, the battles thrill, just as they did before. Next to nothing has changed.

The character models and world are the same low-polygon 3D models as the 3DS release, bar a few upgraded textures, a fact only more apparent in the models for minor characters or the stiff, limited animations in cutscenes. It’s a testament to the timeless art style of the original game that the towns and select areas remain at times stunning and never feel garish when blown up on a larger screen.

A lingering legacy

(Image credit: Square Enix)

The only real differences in Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster are more of a necessity than anything else: the old game made heavy use of the network features of the 3DS, encouraging players to send combat support to other players while walking out in the world via StreetPass, or linking the abilities of your party with friends. These have been adapted to the Nintendo Switch Online ecosystem somewhat awkwardly, the joy of encountering strangers while walking outside replaced with much less interesting ghosts in towns.

There are two new minigames, but these feel like they exist primarily as an excuse to justify Nintendo Switch 2 exclusivity. They each use mouse controls, but not very effectively. Luxencheer Rhythm Catch is a rhythm game timed to a few iconic songs from the game’s soundtrack while a character of your choice dances along. It’s serviceable, but doesn’t feel as natural as a proper rhythm game should.

Ringabel’s Panic Cruise is easily the more involved and interesting of the pair, putting you behind the controls of an airship as you steer around a course and react to commands by pulling switches and knobs or blowing whistles. I could imagine myself enjoying a full game with this concept and controls, but here it feels like little more than a tech demo. With both hidden in submenus, these will be forgotten almost immediately.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Take these minimal bonus features away, and this is almost exactly the same game as it was before. Excluding a few quality of life changes and an adaptation from a two-screen handheld to a single-screen hybrid console, this is identical to the original release. Often, titles like Bravely Default may receive a new translation ahead of a new release, but even that remains unchanged here.

This, at least for me, is fine. In retaining as much of this 3DS experience as possible, Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster stands apart from its contemporaries as something unlike other RPGs on the market right now, faithfully making a classic of the genre accessible to a new generation.

While it’s a tough sell to those who played the original game upon its release due to the unchanged nature of this story and gameplay, I’ve personally enjoyed the excuse to revisit it, exactly as I remember.

For all it isn’t pushing the new hardware to the limits while the limited new features are more of an excuse and obligation to test new hardware than enhance the experience, it’s hard to complain when you have one of the best RPGs of the last 15 years on the largest or smallest screen you could desire.

Should I play Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster?

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

While it’s possible to adjust language and subtitle options in Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster, and there is hardware-level limited button remapping for those using the Switch 2 Charging Grip or Pro Controller, there are no other accessibility features for those needing features such as colorblind mode.

How I reviewed Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster

I played 20 hours of Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster and tried all features, including town rebuilding and bonus minigames.

This brought me partway into the second chapter of the game, although I did complete the game upon its initial release on Nintendo 3DS and compared the experience between the two titles.

Much of the game was played on a Nintendo Switch 2 in handheld or tabletop mode, as well as on an ASUS VG27AQL1A gaming monitor. Audio was utilized in a mix of the system’s internal speakers, Apple AirPods Max connected wirelessly to the device, as well as Denon speakers connected to the monitor via a Yamaha A-S301 Amplifier.

First reviewed June 2025



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Nolah Evolution Hybrid Mattress Review: A Jack of All Trades
Product Reviews

Nolah Evolution Hybrid Mattress Review: A Jack of All Trades

by admin


These holes allow the hips and shoulders to get a generally softer feel, while a firmer one is upheld right under where your spine curves. A 2-inch layer of comfort foam follows for—you guessed it—more pressure relief, along with a transition layer protecting the foam from the coil core. The coils are pocketed, allowing each one to react to your body instead of making it a group project like traditional innerspring beds of old. They’re also reinforced in the center and along the edges, which is just an extra-firm feel to keep these particular areas extra-supported. Lastly, everything is set up on a foam base, which lets the coils really do their thing without being compressed by contact with your bed frame.

Ultimate Sleep Experience

OK, enough shop talk. Here’s what I like from testing this mattress. I remember when Nolah first launched the Evolution back in 2020, and it was touted as a good option for side sleepers with all the pressure relief and lumbar support features. When I eventually tried it (and various iterations afterward), it consistently delivered on these marks. Something that has always stood out to me as a major value add was the three firmness options available: plush, luxury firm, and firm. Having a variety of firmnesses is an easy way to make a mattress more accessible to all kinds of sleepers, especially with different body types and sleeping positions.

I landed on “luxury firm” for a couple of reasons, chief among them being that I’m part of a dynamic sleeping duo. In other words, my husband is a back sleeper, and I’m a stomach sleeper (who is desperately trying to be a side sleeper, mind you). All to say, these sleeping positions can require different firmness levels for adequate support, preferences not even being factored in. Luxury firm is the middle ground, and we’ve found it to be a welcoming amount of softness that doesn’t cancel out the feeling of support.

While I’m on my side, my hips and shoulders get hugged, and if I’m on my stomach, my lower back stays lifted. Everything remains relatively on the same level—hips, lower back, and shoulders—which is what you want for even spine alignment. When on your back, your spine curves away from the bed, but the pillow top takes up that space nicely. That way your back doesn’t feel like it’s being left out support-wise, and this eliminates a potential cause of back pain.



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Samsung HW-QS700F on tabletop
Product Reviews

Samsung HW-QS700F soundbar review: Dolby Atmos and DTS:X in a flexible package

by admin



Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Samsung HW-QS700F: Two-minute review

The Samsung HW-QS-700F is one of the company’s latest soundbars. It combines the performance of Samsung’s Q series models with a stylish lifestyle-friendly design usually found in Samsung’s S series soundbars. Does this mean this crossover soundbar is twice as nice, though, or has becoming a jack of all trades made it a master of none?

At first glance, you might be forgiven for not understanding why the Samsung QS700F might be considered a designer ‘lifestyle’ example of the best soundbars. With its long, angular, hard-finished main soundbar and compact, roughly cubic subwoofer, it looks mighty similar to the components of Samsung’s latest performance-led Q series models.

That’s not to say it’s ugly; it’s slender enough to fit beneath most TV screens, long and deep enough to promise some potent sound, and robustly finished enough to feel like a premium product. And the new subwoofer design Samsung has adopted across most of its soundbar range this year might even be called cute thanks to its relatively small footprint, rounded edges, crisp black finish and jauntily large circular drivers.


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In the end, though, despite unfortunately not joining most of Samsung’s performance-oriented Q series models in carrying a proper built-in LED display, it shares more immediate DNA with the Q series than the usually sleeker, smaller S Series.

The S part of the QS700F deal heaves into view with its so-called Convertible Fit feature. This “dynamic dual set-up” system means that, unlike the vast majority of other soundbars, the QS700F can be configured to truly work in either a wall hanging or stand placement.

Of course, many other soundbars out there can either be attached to a wall or placed on a bit of furniture. Practically none of those other soundbars, though, do what the QS700F does and actually adjust their speaker configuration to optimise their performance for their separate wall-hanging or stand placement options.

What happens with the QS700F, essentially, is that the front and up-firing height speakers in play when the soundbar is sat on a TV stand can reverse their functionality if you tip the soundbar up into a vertical position and turn it upside down to place it flat on a wall. There’s even a gyro system built into the QS700F’s main bar component that can automatically tell if the soundbar is being used flat or vertically, adjusting the sound channel configuration accordingly.

Pictures are worth a thousand words when it comes to explaining this extremely rare feature, so I suggest you take a moment to peruse the below images if you’re still struggling to figure out how it does what it does – and why the result is so different to simply sticking a regular soundbar on a wall bracket.

  • Samsung HW-QS700F (Black) at Amazon for $547.99

Image 1 of 2

A gyro system built into the QS700F reverses the front and the up-firing height speakers when the soundbar is tipped up into a vertical position to place it flat on a wall for a wall-mount installation (see next slide).(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)

The QS700F isn’t the first soundbar that’s been expressly designed to look good and work well when mounted on a wall. Most wall-based soundbar designs, however, can’t also be used in a stand set-up. And soundbars that can do what the QS700F does and completely reconfigure their driver array to support both horizontal and vertical setups are very rare indeed. The main current model I can think of is the Devialet Dione, with its ‘rotating ball’ centre channel speaker, but that will currently set you back £1,800 / around $2,440 – two and a half times what the QS700F costs.

Delivering genuine wall or stand placement flexibility isn’t the QS700F’s only attraction, though. Its 3.1.2 channel count is also more numerous than might have been expected with such an affordable and customisable soundbar – especially given that the .2 bit indicates the presence of two up-firing speakers for Dolby Atmos height effects that are available in either of the soundbar’s two orientation options, and the .1 bass channel bit is delivered by an external subwoofer.

This subwoofer manages to combine likeable, compact aesthetics, too, with two startlingly large drivers on two of its opposing sides. One of these is an active 8-inch driver, while the other is a smaller, passive unit, with the dual-sided approach intended to make it possible to underpin music and, especially, film soundtracks with smoother and less directional bass than Samsung’s previous sub designs did.

The Dolby Atmos playback support (for music as well as movies) mentioned earlier is joined by support for DTS:X soundtracks too, while music lovers can enjoy their favourite tunes streamed in via direct Chromecast, Spotify Connect, Airplay and Tidal Connect support. Supported music file formats are expansive, too, including MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WAV, ALAC and AIFF.

Stereo music can be played in its basic two-channel format by the QS700F, as you would expect, but its sound presets also include a couple of options that can upmix two-channel music to take advantage of all of the system’s available channels. The Surround mode is the most straightforward of these two options, while an Adaptive option brings AI into play, with a particular focus on optimising volume and enhancing detailing and clarity.

A Game preset, meanwhile, emphasises the multi-channel directionality of the surround sound (often Dolby Atmos) audio tracks modern games typically use, to both make the game world feel more immediate and intense, and to give you a better idea of exactly where approaching or attacking enemies are relative to your own position.

The QS700F’s compact remote control (Image credit: Future)

While the QS700F doesn’t carry nearly as many channels as you get with Samsung’s flagship soundbars for 2025, there’s still enough going on to potentially present you with a bit of a setup headache. Happily, though, Samsung has equipped the QS700F with a so-called SpaceFit Sound Pro system that automatically and constantly works to optimise the tone and impact of the bass to keep it in line with the rest of the soundstage, as well as keeping dialogue and effects in balance.

If you decide you want to make the QS700F a full surround system, you can either add a pair of Samsung’s SWA-9500S speakers for £249 / $299, or a pair of Samsung’s Music Frame speakers for a £800 / $600. As well as being much cheaper, I’d suggest the SWA-9500Ses would be the much better option for adding to the QS700F because they include extra up-firing speakers as well as the main forward-facing drivers, enhancing Dolby Atmos’s hemisphere of sound effect.

The QS700F is decently connected considering how affordable it is for such an innovative design, with an HDMI pass-through being joined by an optical digital audio input and the now expected Bluetooth and Wi-Fi streaming options. The Wi-Fi functionality even extends to support for Samsung’s Wireless Dolby Atmos streaming, where the soundbar can receive Dolby Atmos soundtracks from compatible Samsung TVs without the need for any cables.

The QS700F supports Samsung’s Q Symphony system, too, where the speakers in the TV can work alongside those in the soundbar to create a more detailed and well-staged soundscape, rather than the soundbar just taking over all sound duties by itself.

The one disappointment with the QS700F’s connections is that the HDMI pass-through doesn’t join the HDMI ports on Samsung’s Q990F flagship soundbar in supporting 4K 120Hz gaming feeds. So if you have a console or PC capable of outputting graphics to that format, you’ll have to connect your gaming device directly to your TV and use eARC functionality to send game sound from the TV to the soundbar. That approach can sometimes, though thankfully not that often these days, cause a loss of synchronisation between the pictures on your TV and the sound coming from the soundbar.

The QS700F’s top surface control buttons (Image credit: Future)

The QS700F’s performance turns out to be startlingly uncompromised by its innovative multi-placement design. There are some mild differences in how it sounds in its two usage configurations, but overall, it sounds excellent whichever way round you use it, and better, in fact, than most ‘standard’ soundbars at the same sort of price point.

Looking first at performance features that remain consistent regardless of whether you’re using the QS700F in its vertical or horizontal stance, the most immediate thing you notice is how powerful it is. Despite its fairly compact two-piece design, it’s capable of both getting seriously loud and projecting its sound far beyond the boundaries of its physical form. The result is a sound that’s capable of filling at least the front half of even quite a substantial room with a really potent soundstage.

There’s much more to the QS700F’s power and projection than just brute force and loudness, though. Its speakers are also sensitive enough to deliver impressive amounts of detail, be it a mild background ambient sound or a more specific, placed effect. Yet it does so with an excellent sense of balance, where no sound stands out artificially brightly from the mix.

Spot effects are accurately placed in the three-dimensional sound space the QS700F creates in either of its vertical or horizontal placement configurations, too, and sound transitions as noisy objects move around the three-dimensional space are tracked with strong and involving accuracy, clarity and consistency, even if there are multiple moving objects to track at the same time.

Impact sounds are delivered with a degree of venom and projection that’s rare indeed at the QS700F’s price point, while the subwoofer performs well beyond its size, underpinning action scenes with seriously deep and distortion-free rumbles. These also, crucially, feel like natural extensions of the dynamic range delivered by the main bar, with no sense of bagginess or dislocation in the way the subwoofer’s sound ‘attaches to’ it.

Treble effects, finally, also emerge without sounding distorted or overly shrill, especially as the subwoofer’s contributions at the other end of the spectrum provide such a potent counterpoint.

While the QS700F is at its absolute best as an ultra-flexible movie soundbar, it’s also a strong music performer. In either of its vertical or horizontal configurations, music enjoys good staging, with effective but not over-stated stereo separation, nicely positioned vocals that sit at the centre of and slightly above the rest of the mix, and some tight and typically well-timed and consistent bass from the subwoofer.

They might not be to everybody’s taste, but the surround sound upmixing options the QS700F provides for stereo sources work unusually well, too. There’s a level of intelligence and naturalism about the way elements in a stereo mix are separated out and redirected around the system’s 3.1.2 channels that you don’t get with arguably any other soundbar brand bar except, perhaps, Sony. Add a pair of the optional rear speakers and the upmixing becomes even more effective, sounding at times more like a professional surround mix than something that’s being essentially made up on the fly by Samsung’s processing.

The QS700F’s rear ports include HDMI pass-through for connecting an external source like a Blu-ray player (Image credit: Future)

Looking at the differences in the way the QS700F sounds in its vertical and horizontal configurations coincides for the most part with the weaker aspects of the soundbar’s performance.

Due I think to its rather unusual configuration, where it sits tucked up into the upper edge of the soundbar when it’s placed on a desktop so that it can also work when the soundbar has been turned upside down and placed vertically on a wall, the centre channel speaker isn’t a total success. It can sound a touch muffled at times when using the soundbar in its TV stand set up, and in the wall-hanging configuration, while dialogue sounds clearer, it can also sound like it’s coming from slightly below the onscreen action. (Simply overriding the auto-calibration system and turning the centre channel volume output up a couple of notches helps the stand set up centre channel issue, mind you.)

With the QS700F used vertically, for wall hanging, height and ambient effects in a Dolby Atmos mix aren’t spread quite as far and wide or with quite as much authority and polish as they are when the soundbar is in its desktop position. Finally, stereo music sounds slightly more open, rich and detailed with the QS700F in its vertical stance. In stand mode, stereo music sounds a bit hemmed in, not quite escaping from the soundbar’s bodywork as cleanly and effectively as movie soundtracks do.

In the end, I’d suggest sticking with Standard mode for stereo music playback if the soundbar’s hanging on a wall, but at least giving an extended trial to the Surround mode for two-channel music if the soundbar’s sat on a surface.

I need to wrap all this up, though, by circling back to the point I made earlier that while there are one or two mostly minor performance differences in how the QS700F sounds in its two different set ups, Samsung’s new soundbar’s unique convertible fit design doesn’t stop it from still sounding much better, especially with movies, in either of its configurations than the vast majority of normal soundbars do.

Samsung HW-QS700F review: Specs

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Dimensions (W x H x D)

Main bar: 1160 x 51 x 120mm/45.67 x 2 x 4.725 in, Subwoofer: 249 x 252 x 249mm/9.8 x 9.92 x 9.8 in

Speaker channels

3.1.2

Connections:

HDMI input, HDMI output (eARC), Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi, Airplay, digital optical input, wireless Dolby Atmos

Dolby Atmos/DTS:X

Yes/Yes

Sub included

Yes

Rear speakers included

No

Features

4K 120Hz passthrough, voice assistant support, room calibration

Samsung HW-QS700F review: Price & release date

The QS700F comes with a compact, dual-driver subwoofer (Image credit: Future)

  • First available: April 2025
  • Price: £749 / $699.99 / AU$999

The QS700F was released globally in April 2025. While the brand launched a slim-design Q700D soundbar in 2024, the QS700F’s unusual convertible fit design means that it stands as a new product category for Samsung rather than just being an evolution of a previous soundbar model.

The HW-QS700F costs £749 in the UK, $699.99 in the US and $999 in Australia. These prices make the QS700F great value for such a flexible but still high-performance model.

Should I buy the Samsung HW-QS700F?

(Image credit: Future)Swipe to scroll horizontallySamsung HW-QS700F soundbar

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

3.1.2 channels of sound, Dolby Atmos and DTS support, Bluetooth, and a rare true multi-placement design

4.5 / 5

Performance

Outstanding power, detail and staging that mostly holds up no matter which way round you use it

4 / 5

Design

The way the speakers change their role to suit different setups is genius, and both the main bar and wireless sub are surprisingly compact for such a powerful system

4 .5/ 5

Value

Considering the combination of performance and features it provides, the QS700F looks like a pretty good deal

4.5 / 5

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Samsung HS-QS700F soundbar: Also consider

Swipe to scroll horizontallyRow 0 – Cell 0

Samsung HW-QS700F

Sonos Arc Ultra

Samsung HW-Q800D

Price:

£749/$699/AU$999

£999/$999/AU$1,799

£699/$699/AU$799

Dimensions (w x h x d):

Main bar: 1160 x 51 x 120mm/45.67 x 2 x 4.725 inches, Subwoofer: 249 x 252 x 249mm/9.8 x 9.92 x 9.8 inches

1178 x 75 x 110.6mm/46.38 x 2.95 x 4.35 inches

Main bar – 1110.7 x 60.4 x 120mm/43.73 x 2.38 x 4.73 inches; Subwoofer – 403 x 210 x 403mm/15.87 x 8.27 x 15.87

Speaker Channels:

3.1.2

9.1.4

5.1.2

Connections:

HDMI input, HDMI output (eARC), Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi, Airplay, digital optical input, wireless Dolby Atmos

HDMI input (eARC), Bluetooth, Ethernet port, Wi-Fi, Airplay, Sonos Multiroom

HDMI input, HDMI output (with eARC), Bluetooth 5.2, Wi-Fi, digital optical audio, Airplay, Wireless Dolby Atmos

Dolby Atmos/DTS:X:

Yes/Yes

Yes/No

Yes/Yes

Sub / rear speakers included:

Yes/No

No/No

Yes/No

How I tested the Samsung HW-QS700F

(Image credit: Future)

  • Tested across 9 days
  • Used in both a regular living room environment and a dedicated test room, in both its wall-mount and stand mount orientations
  • Tested with a mixture of music and video sources

Testing the Samsung QS700F was more complicated than usual, thanks to its Convertible Fit technology, requiring it to be used for half the time in a regular surface-mounted stance, and half the time in a vertical wall-mounted stance. I tested it extensively in both of its configurations with a range of CDs, high-quality audio streams and 4K Blu-ray movie soundtracks.

The 4K Blu-ray soundtracks I used included both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X mixes, since the QS700F supports both, while stereo music was tested both in native two-channel mode and using the soundbar’s multi-channel upmix feature.

First reviewed: June 2025

Read more about how we test

Samsung HW-QS700F: Price Comparison



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OXS Thunder Pro+
Product Reviews

OXS Thunder Pro+ Review: An interesting answer to surround sound

by admin



Why you can trust Tom’s Hardware


Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

There aren’t a ton of gaming soundbars on the market, but we’ve seen more and more pop up recently — and it’s not surprising, as soundbars make a lot of sense as an alternative to typical desktop PC speakers. They fit nicely under your monitor and can deliver excellent sound, especially for gaming, and you may not even have to give up flashy RGB lighting or surround sound (sort of) if you pick up something like OXS’ Thunder Pro+.

The Thunder Pro+ is a large 7.1 gaming soundbar with built-in RGB lighting, support for Dolby Atmos, and, according to the company, the “world’s first satellite neck speaker.” It comes with a separate neck pillow with two built-in speakers for a more immersive surround sound experience. It’s a nice…thought, I suppose, but I’m not sure a neck pillow with built-in speakers can really do justice to a true surround sound system. And it’s not cheap, either — the setup costs a whopping $700.

Okay, the neck speaker is actually optional — you can get the Thunder Pro+ alone, for $599.99, or bundled with the neck speaker for $699.99. We tested the $699.99 set, but you don’t need to buy it together (you can also purchase the neck speaker separately, if you decide you want it later, but it will cost you $149.99 alone).


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Design of the OXS Thunder Pro+

The Thunder Pro+ has an interesting, somewhat futuristic sci-fi design — it’s definitely more eye-catching than the typical boxy, black home theater soundbar. The Thunder Pro+ has a gunmetal gray plastic chassis, rounded edges, and a gunmetal gray metal grille that hides the forward-firing drivers and an LCD display that tells you which input you’re currently connected to (as well as other settings-related info). There’s RGB lighting in the two round woofers on the top, in the side-facing, angled drivers, and in the two forward-facing drivers on either side of the soundbar.

Image 1 of 7

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The soundbar measures 23.9 inches (608mm) wide by 4.8 inches (122mm) deep, and is 3 inches (78mm) high with the lower set of rubber feet. If you need more space underneath, you can swap out the feet for a set that adds about a quarter of an inch, giving you about one inch under the bar and making the total height around 3.25 inches (82.55mm). The soundbar alone weighs almost six pounds (5.94lbs / 2,694.3g).

Image 1 of 7

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The soundbar comes with a desktop “toggle” controller — similar to the desktop controllers we’ve seen with systems like the SteelSeries Arena 9 and Razer’s Nommo V2 — that lets you easily control the volume (wheel), mute (wheel press), and switch between EQ presets (button) and device inputs (button).

The toggle control is wired and weighted, with anti-slip rubber on the bottom to keep it from slipping around on your desk. While I didn’t find it particularly necessary, as I don’t switch between a lot of devices and have volume controls on my mouse and keyboard, it does make sense for a PC gaming-oriented soundbar to have some sort of desktop control option. The toggle control also has RGB lighting, because why not. The soundbar also comes with a wireless remote, in the event you’d like to set it up as part of the more traditional home theater system.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The Thunder Pro+ has several inputs and ports on the back — DC-in, AUX, separate headset and mic inputs, a connector for the desktop controller, a USB-A port for the neck speaker’s dongle, USB-C, and HDMI and HDMI eARC. It also features Bluetooth, so it’s pretty solid when it comes to input options — though it would be nice to see a headset port, perhaps on the toggle controller for easy access like we saw on the SteelSeries Arena 9 controller.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The Thunder Pro+ comes with several accessories in the box, but not quite as many as you might expect given the number of inputs. It comes with a two-part power adapter/cable, a USB-C to USB-A cable, and an HDMI cable — you’ll need to bring your own AUX cable. It also comes with a desktop toggle controller and a wireless remote (plus batteries), as well as two sets of rubber feet for changing the height of the soundbar.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The satellite neck speaker comes in a separate box, with a USB-C charging cable and a USB-A dongle that plugs into the back of the soundbar. While I understand that the neck speaker is a separate accessory, it’s still a little annoying to have to plug in a separate dongle.

OXS Thunder Pro+ Specifications

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Speaker Type

Soundbar (7.1.2)

Driver Type

2x 0.75″ tweeter, 2x 2.5″ full-range, 4x 1.5″ full-range, 2x 1.75-inch full-range (satellite neck speaker)

Frequency Response

75 – 20,000 Hz

Inputs

DC in, AUX in, 3.5mm headset, 3.5mm mic, USB-A, USB-C

Cables

HDMI, USB-A to USB-C

Size

23.9 x 4.8 x 3 inches / 608 x 122 x 78 mm

Weight

5.94lbs / 2,694.3g

Lighting

Yes

Software

OXS App

Features

Satellite neck speaker, desktop toggle control, remote

MSRP / Price at Time of Review

$699.99

Today’s best OXS Thunder Pro+ deals

Performance of the OXS Thunder Pro+

The Thunder Pro+ is a 7.1.2 setup (the extra “2” is the neck speaker) with two 0.75-inch tweeters, two 2.5-inch full-range drivers, and four 1.5-inch full range drivers, as well as two 20W woofers and four passive radiators for bass. It has two upward-firing speakers, four forward-firing speakers, and two on each side, angled toward the front, for a “wider, richer soundstage.”

Image 1 of 2

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Audio on the Thunder Pro+ is very good — but I’m not sure it’s $700 (or $600, without the neck speaker) good. The soundbar has well-balanced mids and highs, but it lacked a powerful bass response. While this isn’t too surprising on a soundbar, it also doesn’t have a subwoofer input for plugging in a separate subwoofer, so there’s no real option to pump up the bass.

Mid-heavy songs like Enya’s Orinoco Flow sounded good, with excellent separation of details and layers — the soundstage was fairly wide on this soundbar, which made for a more immersive listening experience overall. But bass-heavy songs were underwhelming, and even songs like Lorde’s Royals, which doesn’t need powerful bass but rather detailed lows, sort of highlighted the Thunder Pro+’s less-than-impressive bass response.

Games did sound very good on the Thunder Pro+ — the wider soundstage and crisp, detailed audio sounded great in RPGs like God of War: Ragnarok and Uncharted 4. Voices also sounded good — crisp and clear and easily audible even at lower volumes, so you could also use this in a home theater setup. Directional audio was also excellent, and high-pitched audio cues like gunshots and footsteps were easy to hear and almost eerily accurate. The soundbar supports Dolby Atmos, though you will need to connect via HDMI eARC for this.

The world’s first satellite neck speaker

Perhaps the most unique feature of the Thunder Pro+ is its optional satellite neck speaker, which is a plush, memory foam-padded neck pillow that attaches to your headrest and has two 1.75-inch full-range drivers on either side.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

As far as neck pillows go, this is a pretty high-quality neck pillow. Not one I’d pay $100 for, but definitely more premium than what you’ll find included with a gaming chair like the Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 (and we liked that neck pillow). It has a removable fabric cover, with some sort of smooth, cool-touch gray fabric on the part your head touches.

Image 1 of 3

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

On the back, there’s an adjustable elastic strap with a snap that’s large enough to go around the wider parts of standard bucket-style gaming chairs, so you can place it where you please. It has a nice, contoured shape and is fairly weighty — it weighs around 1.9 pounds (865g), and it feels very expensive. The neck pillow measures 11.6 inches (294mm) wide by 6.7 inches (171mm) tall, and is 4.4 inches (112mm) thick.

Image 1 of 2

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

On either side of the pillow are two round speakers; on the right side you’ll also find a USB-C charging port, a power button, and a link button for connecting the pillow to the soundbar.

Image 1 of 7

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Performance-wise, the neck speaker is… just okay. On the plus side, there’s very little latency between the soundbar and the neck speaker thanks to that USB dongle connection. But audio definitely sounds much more compressed and a little muffled on the neck speaker — in general and especially compared to the soundbar. OXS claims the neck speaker has a 12-hour battery life, but I found this to be significantly less — likely because I was playing sound at a higher volume. Even so, 12 hours isn’t great for something like this, when the best wireless headsets offer anywhere from 40 to over 300 hours.

The soundbar works with OXS’ app, which lets you customize the lighting (somewhat — there are only a handful of options, including audio sync, color mode, and scene mode, which lets you sync the lighting with a visual part of your screen — but you can’t customize it in detail like you can with something like Razer’s Chroma). You can also change the EQ to one of the four presets — but you can’t edit these presets or add custom presets — and adjust the gain of individual speakers.

Bottom Line

The Thunder Pro+ is an interesting concept — the soundbar itself sounds great, even with a less-than-impressive bass response, and if it had the option to plug in a separate subwoofer it would be one of the best gaming soundbars we’ve tested, audio-wise. It features an impressively wide soundstage and crisp, detailed audio with Dolby Atmos support, and it sounds especially good in games.

The neck speaker is… not amazing. While it does offer additional immersion for games and movies, audio quality and battery life are lacking. (That said, it is a very good neck pillow, speaker notwithstanding.)

OXS Thunder Pro+: Price Comparison



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Brother DCP-T580DW during our review
Product Reviews

Brother DCP-T580DW ink tank printer review

by admin



Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

I’m happy to see Brother boarding the bulk tank bandwagon at last. Given the outrageous profit margins to be had from inkjet cartridges, its reluctance is understandable, but Brother is expecting to catch up with the launch of this compact and competitively priced supertanker.

The Brother DCP-T580DW is the more affordable model in a new refillable range that’s aimed at the home office or micro business. It’s a basic color A4 all-in-one with key features such as auto-duplex printing, hi-res scanning and Wi-Fi with AirPrint compatibility built in. There’s no automatic document feed (ADF), rear paper tray or color display, which are reserved for the slightly more expensive Brother DCP-T780DW, which also performed better on test.

But what puts this modest multifunction printer ahead of the cartridge-bound competition are its four ink tanks and four bundled bottles of ink, enabling you to print up to 7,500 black and white pages and 5,000 color. For comparison, the HP Envy 6530e comes with cartridges containing enough ink for 120 back pages and 75 in color. You can see why consumers are choosing tank printers. But how does this entry-level model from Brother compare to the best ink tank printers? I tested it to find out.


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Brother DCP-T580DW: Design and build

Image 1 of 4

(Image credit: Brother // Future)(Image credit: Brother // Future)(Image credit: Brother // Future)(Image credit: Brother // Future)

Specs

Type: color tank inkjet printer

Functions: Print, copy, scan

Connectivity: Ethernet, USB, Wi-Fi

Data storage slots: none

Max print speed: 16ipm (mono)

Max paper size: A4/legal

Print quality: 1,200 x 600 dpi

Apple AirPrint: yes

Consumables included: 4 bottles (7,500 black, 5,000 color pages)

Dimensions/Weight: 15.35 x 13.50 x 5.87in (WxDxH) / 17.42lb – 390 x 343 x 149 mm (WxDxH)/7.9kg

The Brother DCP-T580DW is really a second generation tank printer, following the odd-looking Brother DCP-T525W, which was sold exclusively through Amazon. This version sees Brother take its tank printers to the UK for the first time and it looks much more refined, with the four tanks integrated into a commendably compact design that looks no bigger than a cartridge printer.

To achieve this neat form factor, instead than having the ink reservoirs bulging out at the side as before, their capacity has been reduced. At 48.8 milliliters, these tanks are smaller than Epson’s 65ml EcoTanks, or HP’s 70ml Smart Tanks.

In fact, it’s slightly less than some of Brother’s high-capacity INKvestment Tank cartridges. However, it’s still way more than your average cartridge and it allows this printer to be small enough to sit on your desk without stealing too much space.

There’s only one paper input and its cassette, which holds up to 150 sheets of letter, legal or A4 paper, protrudes slightly from the front. There’s a flatbed scanner on top, but no ADF and the display is a very basic single-line affair surrounded by the usual array of buttons on a tilting panel. The two ports for connecting power and USB cables are at the left side, rather than the rear, which might suit your setup, or it might not.

Brother DCP-T580DW: Features & specifications

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(Image credit: Brother // Future)(Image credit: Brother // Future)(Image credit: Brother // Future)

For an entry-level business inkjet, the Brother DCP-T580DW has a sensible specification. The print speed is quite fast for an inkjet at 16imp in black and white pages or 9ipm in color, while the Wi-Fi is 5GHz with AirPrint compatibility. The print resolution is given as 1,200 x 600dpi, with ink droplets delivered through 420 nozzles. That’s 70 nozzles for each color and 120 for black.

The main paper tray is your only input option and it can hold up to 150 sheets of plain A4, letter or legal paper and the weight limit is 220gsm. It’s worth noting that the step-up model adds a rear multipurpose paper input which is able to take thicker paper weighing up to 300gsm. The DCP-T780DW also has a larger display with a color screen and a 20-sheet ADF that makes the DCP-T580DW look pretty light on features.

Brother DCP-T580DW: Setup and operation

Image 1 of 2

(Image credit: Brother // Future)(Image credit: Brother // Future)

The printed quick start guide is very clear, and you probably won’t need it. Simply load your paper, plug in and turn on. The on-screen prompts will tell you to enter the date and time and when to fill the ink reservoirs. I recommend downloading Brother’s accompanying app called Smart Connect, which will help you get your printer connected to your Wi-Fi network.

This iOS/Android app is also great for printing remotely and checking your printer’s status. With such a small black and white display on the printer, your smartphone offers a much better user interface.

Pouring ink into the tanks is a clean and easy process, or at least it should be. The bottles are the same capacity as the tanks and their necks only fit their corresponding tanks, so you can’t make any catastrophic mix-ups. I didn’t spill a drop, until I made the mistake of only part-filling the tanks and replacing the half empty bottles in the box. What a mess!

Unlike Epson, HP and Canon’s bottles, Brother’s bottles don’t re-seal, even when you think you screwed the lids on tight. To be fair to this printer, it did tell me to ‘fill’ the tanks, so I won’t mark it down for human error.

Brother DCP-T580DW: Performance

(Image credit: Brother // Future)

For me, the Brother DCP-T580DW worked well, starting up promptly and printing as quickly as promised. It makes a slightly annoying wining noise when printing, so it’s less quiet than most inkjets, but there were no instances of jamming, creasing or smudging during the test. The ADF managed to pull in multi-page documents and copy them without any problems and the duplicates were faithful enough.

The print quality is acceptable, but somewhat disappointing at this price point. Starting with black text documents on plain paper, it’s evident that Brother is using a dye-based black ink, which is fine, but the characters look slightly less bold than a pigment black. With office oriented printers you often find dye-based C/M/Y and a pigment BK because text looks sharper and is more scratch and fade resistant, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect it at this budget level.

The colored inks look bright enough, so mixed color documents look fine. It’s when you get to printing images and photos on coated paper that you notice a lack of fine detail resolution. The quoted resolution of 1,200 x 600dpi is the same as the more expensive Brother DCP-T780DW, but it’s achieved using exactly half the number of nozzles. The lower-spec printheads on the Brother DCP-T580DW deliver a very noticeable dip in image quality. The overall print performance is probably good enough for most office documents, homework and handouts, but it’s not great for photos.

Brother DCP-T580DW: Consumables

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(Image credit: Brother // Future)(Image credit: Brother // Future)

Brother comes with three bottles containing 48.8ml of yellow, cyan and magenta and a 108ml bottle of black. This should yield up to 5,000 color pages and 7,500 black and white and a replacement ink set from Brother costs around US$47 or £35, which is a very low cost-per-page. And there’s nothing to stop you using cheaper third party ink.

Brother DCP-T580DW: Maintenance

Being an inkjet printer, the Brother DCP-T580DW is liable to dry out and print badly or not at all if left unused for a length of time. The problem is ink clogging the nozzles and the solution is flushing them through with more ink. At least bottled ink is affordable enough to do that without getting upset. This printer has unusually versatile maintenance options with a choice of three flushing cycles of varying strength depending on the state of your nozzles.

Brother DCP-T580DW: Final verdict

I found much to admire about the Brother DCP-T580DW, from its compact size and fast duplex printing, to its low TCO (total cost of ownership). The features list is rather thin as there’s no ADF, the display is tiny and there’s only one paper input. But at least it ticks all the key boxes, such as auto-duplex printing, A4 scanning, dual-band Wi-Fi and plenty of bottled ink in the box.

It’s a pity the print performance is below average for this price category, with dull dye-based blacks and photos that lack fine detail. For most purposes, it’s probably good enough, but it’s hard to recommend the Brother DCP-T580DW, when the slightly more expensive Brother DCP-T780DW offers all the missing features, more ink and much better print quality.

For more print solutions, I’ve tested and reviewed the best home printers you can get right now.

Brother DCP-T580DW: Price Comparison



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Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Brew on kitchen counter
Product Reviews

Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction review: get the optimum flavor from your beans, hot or cold

by admin



Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction: two-minute review

If you want to make sure you’re getting the best possible flavor from your coffee beans, the Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction will help you achieve it with minimum fuss and zero mess. It guides you through the process of dialling in the grinder and preparing exactly the right amount, so that each shot of espresso is extracted in optimum time for a well-rounded flavor. It isn’t the quickest way to make coffee (for that, look for a fully automatic espresso machine), but if you want to do justice to your beans, this is a great option.

The Impress Puck System is my favorite feature, letting you pull down a lever to tamp your freshly ground coffee without having to remove the portafilter handle from beneath the grinder. You never have to move a filter basket full of loose coffee and risk spilling it, and the tactile feeling of the lever is very satisfying.

The lever-operated tamping system is satisfying to use, and produces a neat, even bed of ground coffee (Image credit: Future)

Once you’ve got your basic espresso just right, you’ll unlock the whole menu of 14 hot and cold drinks. Some popular coffees are conspicuous by their absence (flat white and macchiato, for example) but everything in the list is easy to customize, so you can tweak a preset to create your own creation quite easily.


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Cold brewing involves allowing the bed of ground coffee to infuse in cold water (a process known as blooming) before it’s extracted at high pressure. The result is a smooth-tasting drink that’s a good alternative to traditionally made cold brew, in a fraction of the time.

For me, the only real disappointment was the AutoMilq system, which struggled to create a smooth microfoam with dairy milk. The plant preset worked much better, particularly with oat milk, and using the steam wand manually was a piece of cake. The angle of the wand and shape of the pitcher make it easy to create a good whirlpool, and steam pressure remains consistent.

Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction: price and availability

The Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction is available direct from Sage for £1,199.95 (about $1,600 / AU$2,500). That’s the same price as the original Barista Touch Impress, so you’re essentially getting the cold-brew option thrown in for free.

The Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction is currently only available in the UK. When it does launch internationally, it will be under the “Breville” brand rather than Sage.

If you’re looking for something more affordable, take a look at the Ninja Luxe Café. It’s also a semi-automatic espresso machine, meaning it grinds beans directly into the portafilter basket, and guides you through the process of preparing different drinks. Like the Sage machine, the Ninja also has a cold-brew option for chilled drinks. The Ninja Luxe Café is available for $499.99 / £499 (about AU$750).

Today’s best Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction deals

Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction: specs

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Name

Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction

Type

Semi-automatic espresso machine

Dimensions (W x H x D)

14.2 x 13.4 x 16.3 inches / 36 x 34 x 41.5cm

Weight

24.18lbs / 10.97kg

Water reservoir capacity

2.1 quarts / 2 liters

Milk frother

Automatic and manual

Bars of pressure

9

User profiles

a

Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction: design

The Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction comes in four colors: stainless steel (shown here), black stainless steel, black truffle, and sea salt. When it comes to size, it’s one of the biggest home espresso machines I’ve tested to date, measuring 14.2 x 13.4 x 16.3 inches / 36 x 34 x 41.5cm. For comparison, the similarly specced Ninja Luxe Café is 12.99 x 13.39 x 14.57in / 330 x 340 x 370mm.

When you’re measure your work surface to see whether you have enough space, it’s also worth bearing in mind that the water tank slides onto the back of the machine, so you’ll need enough room to pull it away from the wall when it’s time for a refill. The tank is easy to remove thanks to a robust carry handle on the top, and has a hinged lid that snaps into place to keep the water clean.

The machine comes with a full set of cleaning products, plus a brush and needle tool for the steam wand (Image credit: Future)

The machine is supplied with a water filter to remove impurities, which can affect the taste of your coffee. The package also includes a water hardness testing strip, so you can configure it to suit your tap water. If your water is particularly hard, Sage recommends using pre-filtered water instead.

You’ll also need to make sure there’s sufficient space on the left-hand side of the machine to use the manual lever that compresses your freshly ground coffee. The grinder and tamper (together known as the Express Puck System) mean you’re never handling a portafilter handle full of loose coffee grounds, making the process of brewing espresso much less messy.

The Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction has a large power button on the front of the case, but everything else is operated via its bright touchscreen. This feels smooth and responsive – and, unlike the screens on some other coffee machines, it isn’t prone to fingerprints.

A handy drawer behind the drip tray offers a place to store accessories (Image credit: Future)

Something I particularly like about the Sage Barista Touch Impress is the number of accessories included in the box. You get a stainless steel milk pitcher with a fine spout that’s ideal for latte art; the usual set of single-wall and pressurized filter baskets; a cleaning pin tool for the steam wand; a barista towel; a water filter; and a full set of cleaning products. Open the Eco Starter Kit and you’ll find enough descaler, group head cleaner, grinder cleaner, and milk wand cleaner to keep you going for several months.

If you’re wondering where you’ll keep all that, don’t worry – pull out the machine’s drip tray and you’ll find a handy little accessory drawer. It’s a thoughtful touch.

The bean hopper is tinted plastic, helping keep light away from your beans while still allowing you to see how many are left (Image credit: Future)

The bean hopper is tinted, which reduces the amount of light reaching your beans (something that can cause the flavor to degrade) while also letting you see how many are left – a smart compromise. The hopper also has a good rubber seal to help keep unused beans fresh.

The grinder offers 30 settings, and can be adjusted using a dial on the left-hand side of the machine, near the tamping handle. The dial isn’t marked with numbers, but each time you switch between grind sizes you’ll hear a small beep, and the display will show the new setting. This is far easier than having to peer round the side of the coffee maker.

Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction: performance

The Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction guides you through the process of brewing a well-rounded espresso, handling the more complicated tasks for you to turn the usually tedious process of choosing the correct grind size into something fun.

The first time you use the machine, you’ll be guided through the process of configuring it for your particular coffee beans. This involves calibrating both the grind size and the dosage.

Usually this process (known as dialling in) involves brewing several shots of straight espresso, but the designers at Sage have acknowledged that people have different tastes, so you can pick from a short menu of different drinks right from the start: espresso, long black, latte, cappuccino, and flat white. You’ll unlock the more extensive menu of hot and cold beverages once the initial setup is complete.

You don’t need to remove the portafilter handle from beneath the grinder for tamping, so there’s no risk of spilling loose coffee (Image credit: Future)

Pick a grind size by turning the large dial on the left-hand side of the machine (near the lever), then follow the onscreen instructions to grind the beans into the filter basket. You’ll then be instructed to pull down the tamping lever to create a nicely formed puck. This is the most pleasing part of the process, and the machine recommends doing it twice for the best results. It doesn’t take much pressure, but you get some satisfying resistance with the right dosage.

If you don’t have enough ground coffee in the basket, the machine will offer to grind a little more, then let you try tamping again. If there’s too much coffee, you can use the trimming tool provided in the box to remove a little without creating cracks in the puck.

The tamping lever is extremely satisfying to use (Image credit: Future)

Once the machine has worked out the optimum amount of coffee, it will save it for future use. Don’t worry if you want to use different beans later on, or your coffee’s properties have changed as the beans age – the Barista Touch Impress will check each time you make a drink and make adjustments on the fly.

Once your coffee is nicely tamped, it’s time to insert the handle into the brewing group and start making your first coffee. The Barista Touch Impress will time how long it takes for your shot of coffee to pour, and warn you if it’s taking a long time (and is likely to be over-extracted and sour) or has poured too quickly (making it watery). I like the fact that the machine won’t insist that you discard over- or under-extracted shots, recognizing that some coffee-drinkers have different preferences.

After a little experimentation, you’ll be able to brew consistently well-balanced shots of espresso to enjoy alone, or as part of a longer drink (Image credit: Future)

Once the machine is dialled in, you’ll have access to the full menu of 14 hot and cold presets. It’s a pretty impressive list, but some (such as hot chocolate, shakerato, and espresso martini) are recipes rather than drinks you can prepare using the machine alone. It’s also worth noting that unlike the Jura J10 and the De’Longhi Primadonna Aromatic, there’s no way to foam cold milk.

The options are:

  • Flat white
  • Latte
  • Cappuccino
  • Espresso
  • Long black
  • Babyccino
  • Café crema
  • Hot chocolate
  • Tea (ie. hot water)
  • Cold brew
  • Cold espresso
  • Espresso shakerato
  • Latte shakerato
  • Espresso martini

I was a little surprised that Sage chose to forego some popular coffee drinks (such as caffe latte, flat white and macchiato) while including so many esoteric options such as shakeratos; but all drinks are editable, so you can easily create your favorites by tweaking the presets. The original Barista Touch Impress offered just eight options.

There are recipes for some uncommon drinks in the menu, but a few classics such as the trusty flat white are absent (Image credit: Future)

When you select a cold brew drink, the machine will pulse cold water over the bed of freshly ground coffee in the filter basket and wait a moment to let it bloom before passing cold water through at high pressure.

The result isn’t quite as full-bodied as that from the Jura J10, but it’s still noticeably sweeter and smoother than coffee brewed hot, and a very good alternative to traditionally made cold brew when you don’t have hours to spend steeping grounds in the fridge.

The only feature I found lacking was the Sage Barista Touch Impress’s AutoMilq system, which is designed to heat and froth dairy and plant-based milk automatically.

During tests, AutoMilq seemed to struggle, in particular with full-fat dairy milk. This is surprising, because this is usually the top choice for creating a silky microfoam. Rather than creating a fine foam with the texture of emulsion paint when preparing a latte, the steam wand pumped in too much air, creating a lot of large bubbles, which were unstable and burst as it switched to heating the milk. The result was nicely heated milk, but barely any foam.

Image 1 of 3

The AutoMilq system created a lot of large bubbles in dairy milk, and the foam was unstable(Image credit: Future)Even foam created using the thickest setting turned out thin(Image credit: Future)Oat milk produced much better results, with thick and creamy foam(Image credit: Future)

I had more success with oat milk, with the machine creating smooth and pourable microfoam for lattes, or thicker and “dryer” foam for cappuccinos. You can choose between milk texture options when making your drink, and the machine will incorporate different amounts of air to suit.

I had no problem using the machine to steam milk manually, though, and the angle of the raised wand made it easy to position the jug correctly to get a good whirlpool going.

If you want to steam dairy milk, use the wand manually (Image credit: Future)

Cleaning the machine after use proved straightforward. The machine rinses its brew head when powered on, the steam wand purges automatically after each use, and tapping the “settings” button at the top-right of the screen will let you access step-by-step instructions for descaling, using the blank disc and cleaner to refresh the brewing group, and cleaning the milk wand.

However, it won’t explain how to use the grinder cleaner, and the manual only explains how to dismantle the grinder and use the brush to remove debris. There’s no explanation about how to use the sachet of milk wand cleaner, either.

Should you buy the Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction?

Swipe to scroll horizontallySage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction score card

Attribute

Notes

Score

Value

Well made and feature packed, but over twice the price of the Ninja Luxe Café, and closer to the price of machines that can also foam cold milk.

3.5/5

Design

Easy to use, with clear instructions on displayed on the bright touchscreen. Lever-operating tamping system is satisfying to use. Large footprint won’t fit some kitchens.

4.5/5

Performance

Excellent hot and cold coffee brewing and smart guidance for dialling in grinder, but AutoMilq system seems to struggle with whole dairy milk. Plant milk foams better and wand works fine manually.

4/5

Buy it if

Don’t buy it if

Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction: also consider

How I tested the Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction

I used the Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction for two weeks in place of my usual coffee machine, and brewed coffee using a blend of freshly roasted Brazilian and Colombian arabica beans. I spent time dialling in the grinder for the beans to begin with, and followed the directions to tweak the grind size each time I made a new drink.

I went through the whole drinks menu, and tested the steam wand using full-fat dairy and oat milk. I used the AutoMilq system, and steamed milk manually.

Once I’d finished testing, I ran through all of the machine’s cleaning and maintenance programs.

First tested June 2025

Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction: Price Comparison



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